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Friday, January 8, 2010

Fantasy Friday

Today's Fantasy Friday brings us one of animation's fantasy masters, Ralph Bakshi with his film Wizards. Pure Gamma World, D&D, Mutant Future mash-up which no one has topped since. Classic cell animation, beautiful organic background paintings and trippy effects enhance the other-worldly atmosphere that modern CGI animation has yet to even tap.

Bakshi called this his "family film" and yes, there are elves and faeries and funny looking wizards but there is also mutant goons and Hitler and dark animated demons. It's got some pretty dark and heavy themes but Bakshi believed that kids can handle that. He felt that you didn't have to 'dumb' things down for kids (something that I tend to agree with).

I watched this again over the holidays and it's still inspiring. You don't see this type of animated feature anymore which I miss greatly.